A cable may include a plurality of fiber-carriers, each of which may carry five or ten optical fibers, for example, and the connections between the fiber-carriers of one cable and the fiber-carriers of another cable are enclosed within a sealed connection box. It is common practice to interconnect two fiber-carriers each having ten optical fibers, for example, or to connect one fiber-carrier having ten fibers to two fiber-carriers having five fibers each, with the individual optical fibers being interconnected by connection devices which are fixed on a support which also serves to store slack lengths of optical fiber, and with the support being enclosed in said connection box which may contain a plurality of such supports. The connection devices which interconnect the optical fibers in pairs may be of the individual type (one device per pair of interconnected fibers) or of the multiple type (one device interconnecting a plurality of pairs of optical fibers)
The cables are fixed to the ends of the connection box, and the fiber-carriers are separated from one another beyond the points where the cables are fixed to the box. The length of each cable-carrier between the end of its cable and the support to which it is itself connected is limited to the length necessary for this purpose and as a result the supports can be withdrawn from the box over a short distance only. The ends of the fiber-carriers are fixed to the corresponding supports, and the optical fibers are separated from one another beyond said points at which the fiber-carriers are fixed to the supports. It is necessary to store a slack length of optical fiber on the support in order to provide access to a work station, such as a splicing bench, for example.
Since the supports are stacked inside the connection box, it is also necessary, in order to obtain access to the optical fibers of a given support, to remove the other supports above said given support.
Furthermore, it is not always possible to place a work station in the immediate proximity of the connection box, e.g. when making connections between buried cables, and it is therefore necessary to store a considerable length of optical fiber in each support in order to enable the fibers to reach the work station.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks of conventional supports, by enabling the supports to be manipulated individually and moved close to a work station, thereby limiting the slack length of optical fiber which need to be stored thereon, while allowing a sufficient slack length to be stored on a support for it to be possible, if necessary, to replace one of the connection devices interconnecting a pair or pairs of optical fibers.